Brown and White Vol. 133 no. 9

              The Brown and White Vol. 133 No. 9
Friday, October 6, 2017 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Lehigh engineers create prison algorithm
Students volunteer to clean up South Side
By MADISON PETERSON-PORTA
B&W Staff
Lehigh engineering profes-sors
and students worked with
the Pennsylvania Department of
Corrections to create an algorithm
that saves Pennsylvania taxpayers
$3 million per year.
The project started five years ago
when Dan Li, ’11G, a second-year
doctorate student, interned with
the Pennsylvania Department of
Corrections. Li started the proj-ect
after her internship to create
a more efficient way of assigning
inmates to correctional facilities.
The systematic approach takes
into account various factors of opti-mization
to create an algorithm,
which with a few keystrokes and a
couple of seconds does the work that
used to take seven men one week.
Since then, the algorithm has
been improved by three professors
and four graduate and doctoral stu-dents.
The algorithm will be com-pleted
in the spring of 2018, though
it has been in operation since
December 2016 in Pennsylvania’s
Camp Hill correctional institution.
The algorithm will be recognized
by the Pennsylvania State Senate
on Oct. 17.
“We didn’t know from the begin-ning
if we could solve it, but we did
know that optimization had never
been used in a correctional facility
before,” said Tamas Terlaky, the
former chair of Lehigh’s industrial
and systems engineering depart-ment.
Terlaky took over from pro-fessors
Lou Plebani and George
Wilson, who were both present
during the algorithm’s creation.
After Li obtained her doctorate
degree in 2013, doctoral candidate
Mohammad Shahabsafa followed in
Li’s footsteps.
Shahabsafa currently owns the
project and has spent the last three
and a half years completing the algo-rithm.
In the process, Shahabsafa
and his colleagues were contend-ers
for the Wagner Prize, which is
awarded annually by the Institute
for Operations for Research and the
Management Sciences.
The Wagner Prize contenders are
nominated through a three-part
application. It is one of the most
lauded international prizes in opti-mization
engineering, and winners
have access to the most sought-after
engineering positions.
“It would be an honor to get
the prize…(but) the experience of
being a part of the creation of the
algorithm is more than enough,”
Shahabsafa said, “as I will use the
skills in the future that I have used
in the process of working on the
algorithm.”
Graduate students Anshul
Sharma and Chatainya Gudapti cre-ated
the algorithm’s graphic inter-face
that accesses all the inmate
information in the Department of
Corrections’ system. It then allows
the user to assess and recommend
inmate assignments based on gen- Courtesy of Tamas Terlaky
Tamas Terlaky is the former chair of the industrial and systems engineering department.
Terlaky, along with other Lehigh professors and students, partnered with the Pennsylvania
Department of Corrections to develop an algorithm that helps with assigning inmates to
See ENGINEERS Page 3 correctional facilities.
By JORDAN WOLMAN &
JACKSON LIVINGSTONE
B&W Staff
Armed with gloves, orange vests
and trash bags, almost 200 student
and community volunteers scoured
the South Bethlehem streets Sept.
30. The volunteers collected garbage
off the streets throughout the South
Side and planted flowers along Third
and Fourth streets.
The event, Fall South Side Clean
Up, was led by Adrienne Washington,
the assistant vice president for
Community and Regional Affairs
at Lehigh, and Missy Hartney, the
main street manager for Third and
Fourth streets in downtown South
Bethlehem.
The event, organized by Lehigh’s
chapter of the co-ed community ser-vice
fraternity Alpha Phi Omega,
typically occurs in Bethlehem each
spring. This year, a fall event was
added as well.
Several student groups participat-ed
in South Side Clean Up, including
Eco-Reps and various Greek chapters.
They partnered with the Community
Service Office and local organiza-tions
like the Southside Art District
and Community Action Development
Corporation. Volunteers also includ-ed
individual members of the Lehigh
and Bethlehem communities.
Hartney said
Lehigh students
should feel like
South Bethlehem
is their home and
should take pride in
the community.
“ C ommun i t y
Action was here
today, there was a
city council mem-ber
that was here
today, there were
kids from Broughal
(Middle School),”
Washington said.
“So it is a larger,
broader community event.”
Volunteers picked up trash and
recyclables throughout the South
Side. The garbage was tied up in
trash bags and left at street corners
for removal.
Other groups were dispersed See SOUTH SIDE Page 3
throughout Third and Fourth streets
to plant flowers in designated spots to
beautify the downtown area.
Students worked together with res-idents
throughout the event.
“Being at Lehigh, I want to enhance
South Bethlehem
since it surrounds
the school,” Brianna
Gibson, ’21, said. “I
wanted to do some-thing
I could be
proud of. The work
we did today was
important, and I got
to meet new people
while helping out.”
M a i r e a d
Manning, ’20, said
she thinks the clean
up is a great way
for students to get
involved in the com-munity.
She said it was a fun way
to meet new people and help South
Bethlehem residents.
“The school and the town rely on
each other a lot, so it’s important to
give back,” Manning said.
For some upperclassmen at
Lehigh, cleaning up the Bethlehem
community has a personal benefit.
Older students often lease houses
or apartments on East Fifth Street
and Hillside Avenue, which were the
same areas assigned to the South
Side Clean Up event.
“It’s cool to see students helping us
out and helping the other residents,”
Avery Hogue, ’18, said. “We live here,
but it’s also about our neighbors who
don’t all go to Lehigh but are affected
by the school and the social scene
that happens in this area.”
Manning said students participat-ing
in the clean up encountered as
many red solo cups and beer cans as
they encountered everyday litter.
“We kind of expected it to be hon-est,”
Manning said. “Everyone knows
what goes on down here at night so
it’s gonna leave a lot of trash.”
The South Side Clean Up conclud-ed
with the launch of the “South Side
Pride” campaign.
Paul Pierpoint, the recently retired
vice president of community educa-tion
for Northampton Community
“The work we did
today was important,
and I got to meet new
people while helping
out.
Brianna Gibson
Class of 2021 ”